Traffic is the lifeblood of every website, and with it comes the benefits of new clients. In order to maximize the number of new clients you receive on a monthly basis, you have to focus on traffic growth. Fortunately, many aspects of traffic generation are under your control.
6 Strategies for Traffic Growth
Some strategies for traffic growth that you can control include:
- Page Speed
- Mobile Friendliness
- Technical Errors
- Keyword Research
- Content Creation
- Promotion
Each will be addressed below.
Page Speed
Page speed is a proven factor contributing to ranking. The speed of how your pages load will affect the user’s experience. Search engines will reward fast page speed and demote sites that don’t load quickly.
There are a bunch of free page speed sites that will test the speed of the URL you enter. Most reports will score your speed and give you a breakdown of the items that are affecting your speed score. You can go straight to the source and test your URL on Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool. You will get a score for how quickly your site loads on mobile devices as well as desktop devices.
Mobile Friendliness
Google has pushed the switch to mobile websites since 2013, but some major events have made boosting mobile-friendliness to a top priority. 2016 marked the first time ever that mobile searches exceeded desktop searches. This spurred a Google Mobile-first update where, as of 2018, Google is indexing the mobile version of websites before the desktop versions.
Mobile-friendly websites are the only option moving forward. Desktop versions don’t format correctly on different screen sizes, making the user experience frustrating and unenjoyable. Google has publicly stated that they will give favor to websites that provide a mobile version over those that use a desktop version.
Technical Errors
Use tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Screaming Frog to run a website audit and uncover any technical errors your site is experiencing. Items such as broken links, missing title tags, and duplicate content will cost your site search visibility. By identifying all of the errors your website is generating, you can systematically correct the mistakes to improve the overall performance, which will boost your ranking in the search engine result pages.
Keyword Research
Researching your keywords is a requirement for creating content that will get shared and rank competitively. However, the presence of your keyword in the title, subtitles, meta description, and body of content are no longer necessary to rank for a specific keyword. Search engines determine the context of your content and will rate what your pages are offering in terms of a solution to a search query. What has become the most important factor for ranking pages is now being able to comprehensively satisfy search intent.
Based on the characteristics of top-performing pages, we know that long-form, in-depth content that covers all potential solutions to a query is what search engines are looking for. If a page can offer the most comprehensive solution to a problem, there is a better chance of the user finding what they need from that page.
However, keywords are not entirely extinct; it is still beneficial to optimize your page with keywords in the title and URL. It will enhance your optimization to include keyword synonyms in your subtitles and throughout the body of your text.
Content Creation
The mandate for every piece of content that is produced is to be highly engaging, high-quality, and serve a specific purpose. Typically there is content produced for branding, traffic generation, conversions, and resource pages.
Branding will benefit your company by increasing the click-through rate and conversions. By creating content that tells a story, companies can create a presence that is more relatable for customers. The more transparent a company is about who they are, what they do, and how they do it, the more they build trust with their clients. When a user sees a company they recognize in a search, they will be drawn to click on that website over any other because they are familiar with the company and what they represent.
Content for generating traffic can be written to be published on-site and off-site. The on-site content that generates traffic is typically informational pages that offer value in the form of statistics, instructional guides, interviews, case studies, and infographics.
Creating resource pages are often referred to as link bait. These are pages that people will link to because they find value and want to share with their network or cite your website as a resource in their own content writing.
Promotion
Content written to be published off-site is used to promote your website. Guest posting is a powerful way to improve ranking, brand your business, and direct traffic back to your site.
Backlinks account for a large percentage of your website’s ranking factors. Acquiring high-authority backlinks from well-known blog sites in your industry can give your site a boost in authority, which improves your ranking. The more domains that link to your site, the more credibility your website is given on topics in the niche of which those sites belong.
Popular blog sites typically have a large readership so your site will benefit from referral traffic. Leveraging the popularity of the blog site will give you the advantage to rank an article with your keywords competitively in the searches which can give your site another stream of traffic.
Publishing high-quality articles on the top sites in your industry brand your business as an expert in your field. If your article is a smashing success, people associate your company with value. Publish some of your best work on popular sites in order to brand your business and associate it with excellence.
Conclusion
Every website depends on traffic to bring in new clients. Applying the techniques that are proven to provide results will push your website up in the rankings and promote traffic growth to your small business website.
